Friday, April 24, 2009

Recycling Instances

With the announcement that they are going to be coming out with another 5 man dungeon, it made me think. Wouldnt it be really cool if they tuned some of the old world dungeons to have level 80 Heroic Modes?

Back when I first started playing WoW, 5 mans were the meat and potatoes of the instance game. I knew very few raiders, and all of my in-game friends ran 5 mans constantly. In BC, you had to run a bunch of regular 5 mans to get geared for Heroics and then Raids. In Wrath, you could pretty much go from questing to Raids if you wanted to, and pretty much skip one of the most fun parts of the game.

Some of these re-tooled instances would be absolutely amazing. I still think that the Deadmines was one of the best made Dungeons. It had a kinda Goonies/Pirates of the Carribean feel. There was a long quest chain that led you to kill Edwin Van Cleef, and all of the other bosses were just icing on the cake. Remember the first time you blew the door away and saw the shipe docked there? EPIC.

The great thing is that you could more or less choose what kind of dungeon you want. Zul'Farrak for example had tons of different bosses. It was large and had a very fun gauntlet event towards the end. Not to mention how epic Gahzrilla felt at the appopriate level.

This would also give a lot of people incentive to visit the old places that they may have skipped on the way up. Not everyone leveled when the old content was new. Many people came in new during BC and beyond, which means they probably did not get to see a lot of what was offered. Dire Maul, Scholomance, Strat Live and Dead, BRD were all very nice instances. BRD was one of those things that you set an entire evening aside for. If they redid that one, I think they should take out some of the trash.

Re tuning these instances would also make it so that people were spread across the world and not neccesarily sitting in Dalaran and making Northrend so lag-tastic. I went into Stormpeaks last night to start the Hodir Chain on my Pally and the lag was intense....thank you Ulduar.

Using old content is not a bad thing, especially considering for some people that it really would be new content. I will admit that there are still a few old dungeons I never did. I never finished Wailing Caverns or Mauradon (whichever side has Princess). Not only would this bring in new content for the newer players, it would possibly bring out the people who missed the "Good Ole Days".

I really hope Blizzard takes this into consideration at some point. How hard could it be to change them? Recode the hitpoints and damage on the mobs, and some new abilities to bosses, and update the loot tables. Maybe just do 3-5 each patch. I would visit the Dungeons even if I didnt need any gear from them. How about you?

I've always wished they would do that. I started playing just before BC was released, so I was leveling well into BC (I leveled my first toon slowly, due to learning how to play the game and stuff), and yeah, even before BC came out, it was tough to find a VC group. Not like it is now, where a VC group all below lvl 30 even is rare. I'd love to face a lot of those bosses at max lvl. I can only imagine the fun on some of the fights, where the skill involved in a few of those bosses right now is trumped by level.

I completly agree, I was playing back in "the old days" and I miss a lot of those instances. Pre BC i remember running guild mates through dead mines diremaul lol,, a lot of the old content just seems to be sitting there rotting now.

I agree with the idea in CONCEPT, I don't think it would work. Mainly because it's hard enough to find a solid group for the existing heroics... multiply the number of available instances by 3 (assuming TBC 5-mans were also upgraded) and imagine trying find a group for that specific dungeon.

I'm going to disagree here. Partly because of Dorgol's comment and partly because... well... I still haven't gotten over the scars of having to run Scholomance, Stratholme, and UBRS over and over and over again back in Vanilla Wow. Heck, I've only been to the Culling of Stratholme once, and that was enough for me to have flashbacks for a week.

On a slightly more serious note: a lot of the old fights were total tank and spank. One of the things that have made the new instances "fun" is not having to do the same thing we've had to for 4 years. (Well.. in 5 mans at any rate.) They've made some of the strategy of the raids be necessary for the 5-mans... and that's what's made them fun to me.

I started WoW during the end of BC, but I made a point t o run every dungeon I got a quest for. Setting 4-8hr away from lvling for BRD was a bit much for me though. I got a friend to run me thruogh. Still took nearly 2hr with a 70 DK.